"Relish & More", 12x16, plein air, nocturne, Lighthouse Plein Air Festival, restaurants, Cafe Centro, Ray Chang, Relish & More, Old Northwood Historic District, Palm Beach, piano bar, MAryanne JAcobsen art

"Relish & More", 12x16, plein air nocturne

This painting was the most fun to do during the Lighthouse Plein Air Festival a couple weeks ago. I am behind in posting my paintings from the event, because I came home sick, but this one I really wanted to post because of all the fun involved in the creation. The restaurant is located in Old Northwood Village, near Palm Beach. Old Northwood Historic area is a lovely neighborhood of classic Mediterranean and Mission style architecture made popular by distinguished architects in the 1920's.

The restaurants and shops in this neighborhood are both artsy and eclectic, and I chose to paint here twice, because I was so enamored with the colorful buildings and fabulous architecture. On the second night of the plein air festival, I came here in the evening to paint a nocturne, and chose this spot because it was well lit and I loved all the lights twinkling at Relish & More.

My hubby and I had had a delicious Italian meal that night at Cafe Centro, which is directly across the street from Relish and More, so I felt comfortable setting up there on the corner where Cafe Centro is located.

As it turns out, it was a Thursday night, and Ray Chang's piano bar was on hand to provide me wonderful entertainment as I painted! The music varied in style, but there was not one single song he did that I didn't thoroughly enjoy! As it was, I found myself bobbing up and down to the music as I painted, totally immersed in the joy of the moment and dancing with my paintbrush. (Hey, the blog isn't called PaintDance for nothing!) By the end of the evening, a congo line had formed and people much dancing in the streets to some contemporary stuff with a killer beat. Such fun!

I have only done a handful of nocturnes in my life and am rather inexperienced at the skill required to paint in the dark, but this will go down in memory as of of the most enjoyable paintings that I ever did, thanks to Ray Chang! I so wish we lived closer so I could go back every Thursday night!

Here is a photo of my set-up on the corner:

The thing that makes nocturnes so difficult, is that the light is so distorted that it's hard to judge values on your palette, or even see your canvas very well, what with the glare from the headlamp that you need to use in order to paint. It wasn't my best painting of the week, but it certainly was memorable.

Thanks so much Ray Chang and Cafe Centro for the great meal and music. To get a little taste of what it was like to hear Ray sing, here's a link to a couple videos from the CAfe Centro website or Ray entertaining the crowd. Enjoy!

"Roosevelt and Churchill discussing cigars", plein air, 11x14, Lighthouse Plein Air Festival, MAryanne JAcobsen art, Palm Beach art, plein air, Society of 4 Arts, President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, allies, cigars, bougainvillea, beautiful gardens, garden sculptures

"Roosevelt and Churchill discussing cigars", plein air, 11x14

This was another one of my favorite paintings done during the Lighthouse Plein Air Festival.

I had partipated in the festival two years ago and painted at The Society of the Four Arts before, so I was familiar with the grounds and the beautiful pergolas covered with bougainvillea that are throughout the gardens. So I decided to try my hand this time at adding the sculptures of the the two dignitaries  (President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill) into the painting this time, figuring it would be a piece of cake.

Wrong! Painting bronze images of figures is very different from painting real people! The surfaces are different (skin is soft, metal is hard, flesh tones are predictable, statues in metal are an odd color!) So in spite of the fact that I knew I could nail the background pergola, I struggled with the figures of the 2 allies for quite some time.

Here is a photo of the two friends in the garden, and a couple photos that someone took of me painting them:

In addition to afternoon Florida heat, many people stopped by to chat with me, adding to the difficulties of completing the painting. In the end, it took me 2 afternoons to complete, but I was ultimately happy with the end result.

If you are in the Palm Beach area, be sure to visit the Society of 4 Arts. The grounds are lovely and the Chinese Garden is a special favorite of mine, which also produced a painting last week!

"Afternoon Garden", 8x10, oil on panel, plein air, Lighthouse Plein air Festival, Palm Beach, Jupiter, Florida, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach Garden Club, wet paint

SOLD

"Afternoon Garden", 8x10, oil on panel, plein air

Here is another painting that I did for the Lighthouse Plein air Festival, which sold at the gala.

I painted it in the afternoon of the second day of the event and it was a lovely day in the gardens of the Society of the Four Arts. As I mentioned in my last post, the Society is located in Palm Beach and the gardens are maintained by The Garden Club of Palm Beach. There is an abundance of beautiful color there in the garden, as well as beautiful art sculptures everywhere.

The night of the gala there was a wonderful crowd of art enthusiasts and many paintings were sold that night. Here is my wall of four paintings from the gala:

If you look closely you'll notice that my paintings ended up sandwiched between Neal Hughes (who won first place) and Shelby Keefe, (who won second place). Neal painted right next to me in the Japanese garden one morning and it was an honor to have been juried into a show that included artists of such incredible talent. Morgan Samuel Price judged the winning paintings at the gala, and as I said in yesterday's post, some of America's leading plein air artists participated in the event, so it must have been very difficult to choose the winners! Congrats to all who participated and thanks to the Lighthouse Arts committee for putting on such a lovely event and producing so many sales!

"Spanish Facade Garden", 9x12, plein air, Society of the 4 Arts, Palm Beach Garden Club, Lighthouse Plein Air Festival, Spanish facade

"Spanish Facade Garden", 9x12, plein air

The painting above was painted on location at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Fl., during the Lighthouse Plein Air Festival a few weeks ago.

The gardens there are maintained by the Garden Club of Palm Beach and they are truly lovely and serene. For my first painting of the festival, I chose a shady area of the gardens that is called the Spanish Facade, because they built a small replica of a Spanish hacienda there. The gardens were in complete shade in the morning light, and although the sun began to produce dappled light throughout the garden as the morning progressed, I knew I had to stick with the original light pattern that I started with rather than chase the light.

The festival was wonderful and some of the best plein air painters in the country participated including Shelby Keefe, Jason Sacran and Ken deWaard, who painted right behind me in the Spanish facade garden that morning. I managed to paint 4 paintings in a short time span and I was pleased with the results. I'll be posting more paintings from the event over the next few days.

Here's a pic of the finished painting in the garden. You can see the the light was very different at noon from when I began the painting around 9:30.

If you are interested in purchasing this plein air painting, please send me an email at maryanneJacobsen@aol.com